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DAVm  STARR.  JORDAN 


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The  Blood  of  the  Nation 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 


A     STUDY     OF     THE     DECAY     OF     RACES 
THROUGH  THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  UNFIT 


BY 

DAVID  STARR  JORDAN 

Preiidertt  of  Lcland  Stanford  Jr»  Univeraty 


t^ 


> » > » ^  •      ' 


BOSTON 

AMERICAN  UNITARIAN  ASSOCIATION 

1906 


Copyright  1902 
American  Unitarian  Association 


«■    •    •  • 


F'irst  imprtssioTiy  October ^  1002 

,   «    .  i      *      ^    * 

1  *  ,  *       'J  Settonq  cniPrgssion,  April,  iqos 
Third  impression,  November,  jgoj 
Fourth  impression^  April,  igob 


IN    PEACE 


/t  /t  O  'I  "V  t 

^:  4i  1/  ^ir  /  *i: 


•  -•  •  «    •    • 


.,•;•.:.. ::   •••••••  ••  ••  • 

THE   BLOOD    OF    THE    NATION. 


In  Peace. 

"  Over  trench  and  clod 
Where  we  left  the  bravest  of  us 
There's  a  deeper  green  of  the  sod." 

H.  H.  Brownell. 

In  this  paper  I  shall  set  forth  two 
propositions :  the  one  self-evident ;  the 
other  not  apparent  at  first  sight,  but 
equally  demonstrable.  The  blood  of  a 
nation  determines  its  history.  This  is 
the  first  proposition.  The  second  is, 
The  history  of  a  nation  determi7ies 
its  blood.  As  for  the  first,  no  one 
doubts  that  the  character  of  men  con- 
trols their  deeds.  In  the  long  run 
and  with  masses  of  mankind  this  must 
be  true,  however  great   the   emphasis 

7 


J 


'*.:.'*'J%e  vBf006?  lof  the  Nation 

.•j^ci  •BDfa$^:ldy;5h  individual  iaitiative  or 
on  individual  variation. 

Equally  true  is  it  that  the  present 
character  of  a  nation  is  made  by  its  past 
history.  Those  who  are  alive  to-day 
are  the  resultants  of  the  stream  of 
heredity  as  modified  by  the  vicissitudes 
through  which  the  nation  has  passed. 
The  blood  of  the  nation  flows  in  the 
veins  of  those  who  survive.  Those  who 
die  without  descendants  can  not  color 
the  stream  of  heredity.  It  must  take 
its  traits  from  the  actual  parentage. 

The  word  "  blood "  in  this  sense  is 
figurative  only,  an  expression  formed  to 
cover  the  Qualities  of  heredity.  Such 
traits,  as  the  phrase  goes,  ^^un  in  the 
blood."  In  the  earher  philosophy  it 
was  held  that  blood  was  the  actual 
physical  vehicle  of  heredity,  that  the 
traits  bequeathed  from  sire  to  son  as  the 
characteristics  of  families  or  races  ran 
literally  in  the  literal  blood.     We  know 

8 


In  Peace 

now  that  this  is  not  the  case.  We  know 
that  the  actual  blood  in  the  actual  veins 
plays  no  part  in  heredity,  that  the  trans- 
fusion of  blood  means  no  more  than  the 
transposition  of  food,  and  that  the  phys- 
ical basis  of  the  phenomena  of  inheri- 
tance is  found  in  the  structure  of  the 
germ  cell  and  its  contained  germ-plasm. 
But  the  old  word  well  serves  our  pur- 
poses. The  blood  which  is  "thicker 
than  water  "  is  the  symbol  of  race  unity. 
In  this  sense  the  blood  of  the  people 
concerned  is  at  once  the  cause  and  the 
result  of  the  deeds  recorded  in  their 
history.  For  example,  wherever  an 
Englishman  goes,  he  carries  with  him 
the  elements  of  English  history.  [  It  is 
a  British  deed  which  he  does,  British 
history  that  he  makes.  Thus,  too,  a 
Jew  is  a  Jew  in  all  ages  and  cUmes,  and 
his  deeds  everywhere  bear  the  stamp 
of  Jewish  individuality.^^]  A  Greek  is 
a  Greek ;  a  Chinaman  remains  a  China- 

9 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

man.  In  like  fashion  the  race  traits 
color  all  history  made  by  Tartars,  or 
negroes,  or  Malays. 

|l.The  climate  which  surroimds  a  tribe 
of  men  may  affect  the  activities  of  these 
men  as  individuals  or  as  an  aggregate, 
education  may  intensify  their  powers  or 
mellow  their  prejudices,  oppression  may 
make  them  servile  or  dominion  make 
them  overbearing ;  but  these  traits  and 
their  resultants,  so  far  as  science  knows, 
do  not  "  run  in  the  blood,"  they  are 
not  ^^bred  in  the  bone."  Older  than 
climate  or  training  or  experience  are  the 
traits  of  heredity,  and  in  the  long  run 
it  is  always  "  blood  which  tells."^ 

On  the  other  hand,  the  deeds  of  a 
race  of  men  must  in  turn  determine  its 
blood.  Could  we  with  full  knowledge 
sum  up  the  events  of  the  past  history 
of  any  body  of  men,  we  could  indicate 
the  kinds  of  men  destroyed  in  these 
events.     The  others  would   be   left  to 

10 


In  Peace 

write  the  history  of  the  future.  It  is 
the  "  man  who  is  left "  in  the  march  of 
history  who  gives  to  history  its  future 
trend.  By  the  "  man  who  is  left "  we 
mean  simply  the  man  who  remains  at 
home  to  become  the  father  of  the  family 
as  distinguished  from  the  man  who 
in  one  way  or  another  is  sacrificed  for 
the  nation's  weal  or  woe.  If  any  class 
of  men  be  destroyed  by  political  or 
social  forces  or  by  the  action  of  institu- 
tions, they  leave  no  offspring,  and  their 
like  wiU  cease  to  appear. 

"  Send  forth  the  best  ye  breed."  This 
is  Kipling's  cynical  advice  to  a  nation 
which  happily  can  never  follow  it.  But 
could  it  be  accepted  hterally  and  com- 
pletely, the  nation  in  time  would  breed 
only  second-rate  men.  By  the  sacrifice 
of  their  best  or  the  emigration  of  the 
best,  and  by  such  influences  alone,  have 
races  fallen  from  first-rate  to  second- 
rate  in  the  march  of  history. 

11 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

For  a  race  of  men  or  a  herd  of  cattle 
are  governed  by  the  same  laws  of  selec- 
tion. Those  who  survive  inherit  the 
traits  of  their  own  actual  ancestry.  In 
the  herd  of  cattle,  to  destroy  the  strong- 
est bulls,  the  fairest  cows,  the  most 
promising  calves,  is  to  allow  those  not 
strong  nor  fair  nor  promising  to  become 
the  parents  of  the  coming  herd.  Under 
this  influence  the  herd  will  deteriorate, 
although  the  individuals  of  the  inferior 
herd  are  no  worse  than  their  own  actual 
parents.  Such  a  process  is  called  race- 
degeneration,  and  it  is  the  only  race- 
degeneration  known  in  the  history  of 
cattle  or  men.  The  scrawny,  lean,  in- 
fertile herd  is  the  natural  offspring  of 
\the  same  type  of  parents.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  we  sell  or  destroy  the  rough, 
lean,  or  feeble  calves,  we  shall  have  a 
herd  descended  from  the  best.'  It  is 
said  that  when  the  short-horned  Durham 
cattle  first  attracted  attention  in  Eng- 

12 


In  Peace 

land,  the  long-horns  which  preceded 
them,  inferior  for  beef  or  milk,  van- 
ished ^^as  if  smitten  by  a  pestilence." 
The  fact  was  that,  being  less  valu- 
able, their  owners  chose  to  destroy 
them  rather  than  the  finer  Durhams. 
Thus  the  new  stock  came  from  the 
better  Durham  parentage.  If  condi- 
tions should  ever  be  reversed  and  the 
Durhams  were  chosen  for  destruction, 
then  the  long-horns  might  again  appear, 
swelling  in  numbers  as  if  by  magic, 
unless  all  traces  of  the  breed  had  in  the 
meantime  been  annihilated. 

In  selective  breeding  with  any  domes- 
ticated animal  or  plant,  it  is  possible, 
with  a  little  attention,  to  produce  won- 
derful changes  for  the  better.  Almost 
anything  may  be  accomphshed  with 
time  and  patience.  To  select  for  pos- 
terity those  individuals  which  best  meet 
our  needs  or  please  our  fancy,  and  to 
destroy  those  with  unfavorable  qualities, 

13 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

is  the  function  of  artificial  selection. 
Add  to  this  the  occasional  crossing  of 
unlike  forms  to  promote  new  and  desir- 
able variations,  and  we  have  the  whole 
secret  of  selective  breeding.  This  pro- 
cess Youatt  calls  the  "  magician's  wand  " 
by  which  man  may  summon  up  and 
bring  into  existence  any  form  of  animal 
or  plant  useful  to  him  or  pleasing  to  his 
fancy. 

In  the  animal  world,  progress  comes 
mainly  through  selection,  natural  or 
artificial,  the  survival  of  the  fittest  to 
become  the  parent  of  the  new  genera- 
tion. In  the  world  of  man  similar 
causes  produce  similar  results.  The 
word  "  progress  "  is,  however,  used  with 
a  double  meaning,  including  the  advance 
of  civilization  as  well  as  race  improve- 
ment. The  first  of  these  meanings  is 
entirely  distinct  from  the  other.  The 
results  of  training  and  education  lie 
outside  the  scope  of  the  present  discus- 

14 


Li  Peace 

sion.  By  training  the  force  of  the  in- 
dividual man  is  increased.  Education  ^^ 
gives  him  access  to  the  accumulated  "^ 
stores  of  wisdom  built  up  from  the  ex- 
perience of  ages.  The  trained  man  is 
placed  in  a  class  relatively  higher  than 
the  one  to  which  he  would  belong  on 
the  score  of  heredity  alone.  Heredity 
carries  with  it  possibilities  for  effective- 
ness. Training  makes  these  possibih- 
ties  actual.  Civilization  has  been  de- 
fined as  "  the  sum  total  of  those  agen- 
cies and  conditions  by  which  a  race  may 
advance  independently  of  heredity." 
But  while  education  and  civilization 
may  greatly  change  the  life  of  individ- 
uals, and  through  them  that  of  the 
nation,  these  influences  are  spent  on  the 
individual  and  the  social  system  of 
which  he  is  a  part.  So  far  as  science 
knows,  education  and  training  play  no 
part  in  heredity.  The  change  in  the 
blood   which   is    the   essence   of   race- 

15 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

progress,  as  distinguished  from  progress 
in  civilization,  finds  its  cause  in  selec- 
tion only. 

To    apply  to   nations  the  principles 

;  known  to  be  valid  in  cattle-breeding,  we 

i  may  take  a  concrete  example,  that  of 

i  the  alleged  decadence   of   France.     It 

\\  is  claimed  that  the  birth-rate  is  falhng 

off  in  France,  that  the  stature  is  lower, 

and  the  physical  force  less  among  the 

I  French  peasantry  than  it  was  a  century 

ago.     If  all  this  is  true,  then  the  cause 

for  it  must  be  in  some  feature  of  the 

life  of  France  which  has  changed  the 

^.  jiormal  processes  of  selection. 

In  the  present  paper  I  shall  not  at- 
tempt to  prove  these  statements.  They 
rest,  so  far  as  I  know,  entirely  on  asser- 
tions of  French  writers,  and  statistics 
are  not  easily  obtained.  It  suffices  that 
an  official  commission  has  investigated 
the  causes  of  reduced  fertility,  with 
chiefly  negative  results.     It  is  not  due 

16 


In  Peace 

primarily  to  intemperance  nor  vice  nor 
prudence  nor  misdirected  education,  the 
rush  to  "  ready-made  careers/'  but  to  in- 
herited deficiencies  of  the  people  them- 
selves. It  is  not  a  matter  of  the  cities 
alone,  but  of  the  whole  body  of  French 
peasantry.  Legoyt,  in  his  study  of 
"  the  alleged  degeneration  of  the  French 
people,"  tells  us  that  "  it  will  take  long 
periods  of  peace  and  plenty  before 
France  can  recover  the  tall  statures 
mowed  down  in  the  wars  of  the  repub- 
lic and  the  First  Empire/'  though  how 
plenty  can  provide  for  the  survival  of 
the  tallest  this  writer  does  not  explain. 
Peace  and  plenty  may  preserve,  but  they 
can  not  restore.  --i 

It  is  claimed,  on  authority  which  I 
have  failed  to  verify,  that  the  French 
soldier  of   to-day  is  nearly  two  inches   \ 
shorter   than   the  soldier  of  a  century  J 
ago.     One    of  the   most   important  of 
recent  French  books,  by  Edmond  De- 

17 


/ 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

molins,  asks^  "  In  what  consists  the  su- 
periority of  the  Anglo-Saxon  ?  "  The 
answer  is  found  in  defects  of  training 
and  of  civic  and  personal  ideals,  but 
the  real  cause  Kes  deeper  than  all  this. 
Low  ideals  in  education  are  developed 
by  inferior  men.  Dr.  Nordau  and  his 
school  of  exponents  of  "hand-painted 
science  "  find  France  a  nation  of  deca- 
dents,—  a  condition  due  to  the  inherited 
strain  of  an  overwrought  civilization. 
With  them  the  word  "  degenerate "  is 
found  adequate  to  explain  all  eccen- 
tricities of  French  literature,  art,  poli- 
tics, or  jurisprudence. 

But  science  knows  no  such  things  as 
nerve-stress  inheritance.  If  it  did,  the 
peasantry  of  France  have  not  been  sub- 
jected to  it.  Their  life  is  hard,  no 
doubt,  but  not  stressful;  and  they 
suffer  more  from  nerve-sluggishness 
than  from  any  form  of  enforced  psychi- 
cal activity.     The  kind  of  degeneration 

18 


In  Peace 

Nordau  pictures  is  not  a  matter  of  he- 
redity. When  not  simply  personal  ec- 
centricity, it  is  a  phase  of  personal 
decay.  It  finds  its  causes  in  bad  habits, 
bad  training,  bad  morals,  or  in  the 
desire  to  catch  public  attention  for  per- 
sonal advantage.  It  has  no  perma- 
nence in  the  blood  of  the  race.  The 
presence  on  the  Paris  boulevards  of  a 
mob  of  crazy  painters,  maudlin  musi- 
cians, drunken  poets,  and  sensation- 
mongers  proves  nothing  as  to  race 
degeneracy.  When  the  fashion  changes, 
they  will  change  also.  Already  the 
fad  of  "  strenuous  life "  is  blowing 
them  away.  Any  man  of  any  race 
withers  in  an  atmosphere  of  vice,  ab- 
sinthe, and  opium.  The  presence  of 
such  an  atmosphere  may  be  an  effect  of 
race  decadence,  but  it  is  not  a  cause  of 
the  lowered  tone  of  the  nation. 

Evil   influences   may   kill    the   indi- 
vidual,   but    they    cannot   tarnish  the 

19 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

Btream  of  heredity.  The  child  of  each 
generation  is  free-born  so  far  as  hered- 
ity goes,  and  the  sins  of  the  fathers 
are  not  visited  upon  him.  If  vice 
strikes  deeply  enough  to  wreck  the 
man,  it  is  likely  to  wreck  or  kill  the 
child  as  well,  not  through  heredity,  but 
through  lack  of  nutrition.  The  child 
depends  on  its  parents  for  its  early 
vitality,  its  constitutional  strength,  the 
momentum  of  its  Uf e,  if  we  may  use  the 
term.  For  this  a  sound  parentage 
demands  a  sound  body.  The  unsound 
parentage  yields  the  withered  branches, 
the  lineage  which  speedily  comes  to  the 
end.  But  this  class  of  influences,  af- 
fecting not  the  germ-plasm,  but  general 
vitality,  has  no  relation  to  hereditary 
qualities,  so  far  as  we  know. 

In  heredity  there  can  be  no  tendency 
downward  or  upward.  Nature  repeats, 
and  that  is  all.  From  the  actual  par- 
ents actual  qualities  are  received,  the 

20 


In  Peace 

traits  of  the  man  or  woman  as  they 
might  have  been,  without  regard,  so  far 
as  we  know,  to  the  way  in  which  these 
quaUties  have  been  actually  developed. 

The  evolution  of  a  race  is  selective 
only,  never  collective.  Collective  evo- 
lution, the  movement  upward  or  down- 
ward of  a  people  as  a  whole,  irrespective 
of  education  or  of  selection,  is,  as  Le- 
pouge  has  pointed  out,  a  thing  un- 
knowi:i.J  ^^-«3Qsts  in  rhetori%Haot  iu- 
.teftth  nor  in^iistory/' 

No  race  as  a  whole  can  be  made  up 
of  "degenerate  sons  of  noble  sires." 
Where  decadence  exists,  the  noble  sires 
have  perished,  either  through  evil  in- 
fluences, as  in  the  slums  of  great  cities, 
or  else  through  the  movements  of  his- 
tory or  the  growth  of  institutions.  If 
a  nation  sends  forth  the  best  it  breeds 
to  destruction,  the  second  best  will 
take  their  vacant  places.  |  The  weak, 
the  vicious,  the   unthrifty  will   propa- 

21 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

gate,  and  in  default  of  better  will  have 
the  land  to  themselves. 

We  may  now  see  the  true  significance 
of  the  "  Man  of  the  Hoe/'  as  painted 
by  Millet  and  as  pictured  in  Edwin 
Markham's  verse.  This  is  the  Norman 
peasant,  low-browed,  heavy-jawed,  "  the 
brother  of  the  ox,"  gazing  with  lack- 
lustre eye  on  the  things  about  him. 
To  a  certain  extent,  he  is  typical  of  the 
French  peasantry.  Every  one  who  has 
travelled  in  France  knows  well  his  kind. 
If  it  should  be  that  his  kind  is  increas- 
ing, it  is  because  his  betters  are  not. 
It  is  not  that  his  back  is  bent  by  cen- 
turies of  toil.  He  was  not  born  op- 
pressed. Heredity  carries  over  not  op- 
pression, but  those  qualities  of  mind 
and  heart  which  invite  or  which  defy 
oppression.  The  tyrant  harms  those 
only  that  he  can  reach.  The  new  gen- 
eration is  free-born,  and  slips  from  his 
hands,  unless  its  traits  be  of  the  kind 
which  demand  new  tyrants. 

22 


In  Peace 

Millet's  "  Man  of  the  Hoe "  is  not 
the  product  of  oppression.  He  is  primi- 
tive^ aboriginal.  His  lineage  has  always 
been  that  of  the  clown  and  swineherd. 
The  heavy*  jaw  and  slanting  forehead 
can  be  found  in  the  oldest  mounds  and 
tombs  of  France.  The  skulls  of  Engis 
and  Neanderthal  were  typical  men  of 
the  hoe,  and  through  the  days  of  the 
Gauls  and  Romans  the  race  was  not 
extinct.  The  "lords  and  masters  of 
the  earth"  can  prove  an  alibi  when 
accused  of  the  fashioning  of  the  terrible 
shape  of  this  primitive  man.  And 
men  of  this  shape  persist  to-day  in 
regions  never  invaded  by  our  social  or 
political  tyranny,  and  their  kind  is  older 
than  any  existing  social  order. 

That  he  is  "  chained  to  the  wheel  of 
labor "  is  the  result,  not  the  cause,  of 
his  impotence.  In  dealing  with  him, 
therefore,  we  are  far  from  the  "labor 
problem  "  of  to-day,  far  from  the  work- 

23 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

man  brutalized  by  machinery,  and  from 
all  the  wrongs  of  the  poor  set  forth 
in  the  conventional  literature  of  sym- 
pathy. 

In  our  discussion  of  decadence  we 
turn  to  France  first  simply  as  a  con- 
venient illustration.  Her  sins  have  not 
been  greater  than  those  of  other  lands, 
nor  is  the  penalty  more  significant. 
Her  case  rises  to  our  hand  to  illustrate 
a  principle  which  applies  to  all  human 
history  and  to  all  history  of  groups 
of  animals  and  plants  as  well.  Our 
picture,  such  as  it  is,  we  must  paint 
with  a  broad  brush,  for  we  have  no 
space  for  exceptions  and  quahfications, 
which,  at  the  most,  could  only  prove 
the  rule.  To  weigh  statistics  is  im- 
possible, for  the  statistics  we  need 
have  never  been  collected.  The  evil 
effects  of  "military  selection"  and  al- 
lied causes  have  been  long  recognized 
by  students  of  social  science,  but  their 

24 


In  Peace 

ideas  have  not  penetrated  into  the  com- 
mon literature  of  common  hfe. 

The  survival  of  the  fittest  in  the 
struggle  for  existence  is  the  primal  . / 
cause  of  race-progress  and  race-changes. 
But  in  the  red  field  of  human  history 
the  natural  process  of  selection  is  often 
reversed.  The  survival  of  the  unfittest 
is  the  primal  cause  of  the  downfall  of 
nations.  Let  us  see  in  what  ways  this  '* 
cause  has  operated  in  the  history  of 
France. 

First,  we  may  consider  the  relation 
of  the  nobility  to  the  peasantry,  the 
second  to  the  third  estate. 

The  feudal  nobility  of  each  nation 
was  in  the  beginning  made  up  of  the 
fair,  the  brave,  and  the  strong.  By 
their  courage  and  strength  their  men 
became  the  rulers  of  the  people,  and 
by  the  same  token  they  chose  the 
beauty  of  the  realm  to  be  their  own. 

In  the  polity  of  England  this  supe- 

25 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

riority  was  emphasized  by  the  law  of 
primogeniture.  On  "  inequality  before 
the  law"  British  polity  has  always 
rested.  Men  have  tried  to  take  a  cer- 
tain few,  to  feed  these  on  "  royal  jelly/' 
as  the  young  queen  bee  is  fed,  and  thus 
to  raise  them  to  a  higher  class,  dis- 
tinct from  all  the  workers.  To  take 
this  leisure  class  out  of  the  struggle 
and  competition  of  life,  so  goes  the 
theory,  is  to  make  of  the  first-born  and 
his  kind  harmonious  and  perfect  men 
and  women,  fit  to  lead  and  control  the 
social  and  political  life  of  the  state. 
In  England  the  eldest  son  is  chosen 
for  this  purpose, —  a  good  arrangement, 
j  according  to  Samuel  Johnson,  "be- 
/  cause  it  insures  only  one  fool  in  the 
family."  For  the  theory  of  the  leisure 
class  forgets  that  men  are  made  virile 
by  efPort  and  resistance,  and  the  lord 
developed  by  the  use  of  "  royal  jelly  " 
has  rarely  been  distinguished  by  per- 
fection of  manhood. 

26 


In  Peace 

The  gain  of  primogeniture  came  in 
the  fact  that  the  younger  sons  and  the 
daughters'  sons  were  forced  constantly 
back  into  the  mass  of  the  people. 
Among  the  people  at  large  this  stronger 
blood  became  the  dominant  strain.  The 
Englishmen  of  to-day  are  the  sons  of 
the  old  nobility,  and  in  the  stress  of 
natural  selection  they  have  crowded 
out  the  children  of  the  swineherd  and 
the  slave.  The  evil  of  primogeniture 
has  furnished  its  own  antidote.  It  has 
begotten  democracy.  The  younger 
sons  in  Cromwell's  ranks  asked  on 
their  battle-flags  why  the  eldest  should 
receive  all  and  they  nothing.  Richard 
Rumbold,  whom  they  slew  in  the 
Bloody  Assizes,  "could  never  beheve 
that  Providence  had  sent  into  the  world 
a  few  men  already  booted  and  spurred, 
with  countless  millions  already  saddled 
and  bridled  for  these  few  to  ride." 
Thus   these  younger  sons  became   the 

27 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

Roundhead,  the  Puritan,  the  Pilgrim. 
They  swelled  Cromwell's  anny,  they 
knelt  at  Marston  Moor,  they  manned 
the  "  Mayflower,"  and  in  each  generation 
they  have  fought  for  liberty  in  Eng- 
land and  in  the  United  States.  Studies 
in  genealogy  show  that  all  this  is  lit- 
erally true.  All  the  old  families  in 
New  England  and  Virginia  trace  their 
lines  back  to  nobility,  and  thence  to 
royalty.  Almost  every  Anglo-Amer- 
ican has,  if  he  knew  it,  noble  and  royal 
blood  in  his  veins.  The  Massachusetts 
farmer,  whose  fathers  came  from  Plym- 
outh in  Devon,  has  as  much  of  the 
blood  of  the  Plantagenets,  of  William 
and  of  Alfred,  as  flows  in  any  royal 
veins  in  Europe.  But  his  ancestral 
line  passes  through  the  working  and 
fighting  younger  son,  not  through  him 
who  was  first  born  to  the  purple.  The 
persistence  of  the  strong  shows  itself  in 
the  prevalence  of  the  leading  qualities 

28 


In  Peace 

of  her  dominant  strains  of  blood,  and 
it  is  well  for  England  that  her  gentle 
blood  flows  in  all  her  ranks  and  in  all 
her  classes.  When  we  consider  with 
Demolins  "  what  constitutes  the  supe- 
riority of  the  An^lo-Saxon/'  we  shall 
find  his  descent  from  the  old  nobihty, 
"  Saxon  and  Norman  and  Dane,"  not 
the  least  of  its  factors. 

On  the  continent  of  Europe  the  law 
of  primogeniture  existed  in  less  force, 
and  the  results  were  very  distinct.  All 
of  noble  blood  were  continuously  noble. 
All  belonged  to  the  leisure  class.  All 
were  held  on  the  backs  of  a  third 
estate,  men  of  weaker  heredity,  beaten 
lower  into  the  dust  by  the  weight  of  an 
ever-increasing  body  of  nobility.  The 
blood  of  the  strong  rarely  mingled 
with  that  of  the  clown.  The  noblemen 
were  brought  up  in  indolence  and  in- 
effectiveness. The  evils  of  dissipation 
wasted  their  individual  Uves,  while  cast- 

29 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

ing  an  ever-increasing  burden  on  the 
villager  and  on  the  "  farmer  who  must 
pay  for  all." 

Hence  in  France  the  burden  of  tax- 
ation led  to  the  Revolution  and  its 
Reign  of  Terror.  I  need  not  go  over 
the  details  of  dissipation,  intrigue,  ex- 
tortion, and  vengeance  which  brought 
to  sacrifice  the  "  best  that  the  nation 
could  bring."  In  spite  of  their  lust  and 
cruelty,  the  victims  of  the  Reign  of 
Terror  were  literally  the  best  from  the 
standpoint  of  race  development.  Their 
weaknesses  were  those  of  training  in 
luxury  and  irresponsible  power.  These 
effects  were  individual  only ;  and  their 
children  were  free-born,  with  the  ca- 
pacity to  grow  up  truly  noble  if  re- 
moved from  the  evil  surroundings  of 
the  palace. 

In  Thackeray's  "Chronicle  of  the 
Drum,"  the  old  drimimer,  Pierre,  tells 
us  that 

30 


(C 


In  Peace 

Those  glorious  days  of  September 

Saw  many  aristocrats  fall ; 
'Twas  then  that  our  pikes  drank  the  blood 

In  the  beautiful  breast  of  Lamballe. 


"  Pardi,  'twas  a  beautiful  lady, 

I  seldom  have  looked  on  her  like  ; 
And  I  drummed  for  a  gallant  procession 
That  marched  with  her  head  on  a  pike." 

Then  they  showed  her  pale  face  to  the 
Queen,  who  fell  fainting ;  and  the  mob 
called  for  her  head  and  the  head  of  the 
King.  And  the  slaughter  went  on 
until  the  man  on  horseback  came,  and 
the  mob,  "aUve  but  most  reluctant/' 
was  itself  forced  into  the  graves  it  had 
dug  for  others. 

And  since  that  day  the  "  best  that 
the  nation  could  bring  "  have  been  with- 
out descendants,  the  men  less  manly 
than  the  sons  of  the  Girondins  would 
have  been,  the  women  less  beautiful 
than  the  daughters  of  Lamballe.  The 
poUtical  changes  which  arose  may  have 

81 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

been  for  the  better ;  the  change  in  the 
blood  was  all  for  the  worse. 

Other  influences  which  destroyed  the 
best  were  social  repression,  religious  in- 
tolerance, and  the  intolerance  of  irre- 
Ugion  and  unscience.  It  was  the  atheist 
I  mob  of  Paris  which  destroyed  Lavoisier, 
with  the  sneer  thac  the  new  republic  of 
reason  had  no  use  for  savants.  The 
old  conservatism  burned  the  heretic  at 
the  stake,  banished  the  Huguenot,  de- 
stroyed the  lover  of  freedom,  silenced 
the  agitator.  Its  intolerance  gave  Cu- 
vier  and  Agassiz  to  Switzerland,  sent 
the  Le  Contes  to  America,  the  Jouberts 
to  Holland,  and  furnished  the  backbone 
of  the  fierce  democracy  of  the  Trans- 
vaal. While  not  all  agitators  are  sane,  A 
and  not  all  heretics  right-minded,  yet 
no  nation  can  spare  from  its  numbers 
those  men  who  think  for  themselves 
and  those  who  act  for  themselves. 
Tjt   cannot  ^afford    to    drive    away^or 

32 


/ 


In  Peace 

destroy  those  who  are  filled  with  re*- 
hgious  zeal,  nor  those  whose  religious 
zeal  takes  a  form  not  approved  by  tradi- 
tion  nor  by  consent  of  the  masses.    All/ 
movements  toward  social  and  religious  \ 
reform  are  signs  of  individual  initiative 
and    individual     force.     The    country  !; 
which  stamps  out  individuality  will  sopn-^ 
live  in  the  mass  alone^__,.^— -^""""^ 

A  French  writer  has  claimed  that  the 
decay  of  religious  spirit  in  France  is 
connected  with  the  growth  of  religious 
orders  of  which  celibacy  is  a  prominent 
feature.  If  religious  men  and  women 
leave  no  descendants,  their  own  spirit,  at 
least,  will  fail  of  inheritance.  A  people 
careless  of  religion  inherit  this  trait  from 
equally  careless  ancestors. 

Indiscriminate  charity  has  been  a 
fruitful  cause  of  the  survival  of  the 
unfit.  To  kill  the  strong  and  to  feed 
the  weak  is  to  provide  for  a  progeny  of 
weakness.    It  is  a  French  writer,  again, 

33 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

who    says   that  "Charity   creates    the 
misery  she  tries   to    reUeve;    she    can 
never  relieve  half  the  misery  she  cre- 
ates." 
r     There  is  to-day  in  Aosta,  in  Northern 

^  Italy,  an  asylum  for  the  care  and 
culture  of  idiots.  The  cretin  and  the 
goitre  are  assembled  there,  and  the 
marriage  of  those  who  cannot  take 
care  of  themselves  ensures  the  preserva- 
tion of  their  strains  of  unfitness.  By 
caring  devotedly  for  those  who  in  the 
stress  of  life  could  not  live  alone  for  a 
week,  and  by  caring  for  their  children, 
generation  after  generation,  the  good 
people  of  Aosta  have  produced  a  new 
breed  of  men,  who  cannot  even  feed 
themselves.  These  are  incompetent 
through  selection  of  degradation,  while 
the  "  Man  of  the  Hoe "  is  primitively 

*^  ineffective. 

The  growth  of  the  goitre  in  the  val- 
leys of  Savoy,  Piedmont,  and  Valais,  is 

34 


In  Peace 

itself  in  large  part  a  matter  of  selection. 
The  boy  with  the  goitre  is  exempt  from 
miUtary  service.  He  remains  at  home 
to  become  the  father  of  the  family.  It 
is  said  that  at  one  time  the  government 
of  Savoy  furnished  the  children  of  that 
region  with  lozenges  of  iodine,  which 
were  supposed  to  check  the  abnormal 
swelling  of  the  thyroid  gland,  known  as 
the  goitre.  This  disease  is  a  frequent 
cause  of  idiocy,  or  cretinism,  as  well  as 
its  almost  constant  accompaniment.  It 
is  said  that  the  mothers  gave  the  loz- 
enges only  to  the  girls,  preferring  that 
the  boys  should  grow  up  to  the  goitre 
rather  than  to  the  army.  The  causes 
of  goitre  are  obscure,  perhaps  depend- 
ing on  poor  nutrition  or  on  mineral 
substances  in  the  water.  The  disease 
itself  is  not  hereditary,  so  far  as  known  ; 
but  susceptibility  to  it  certainly  is.  By 
taking  away  for  outside  service  those 
who  are  resistant,  the  heredity  of  ten- 

35 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

dency  to  goitrous  swelling  is  fastened 
on  those  who  remain. 

Like  these  mothers  in  Savoy  was  a 
mother  in  Germany.  Not  long  since  a 
friend  of  the  writer,  passing  through  a 
Franconian  forest,  found  a  young  man 
lying  senseless  by  the  way.  It  was  a 
young  recruit  for  the  army  who  had 
got  into  some  trouble  with  his  com- 
rades. They  had  beaten  him  and  left 
him  lying  with  a  broken  head.  Carried 
to  his  home,  his  mother  fell  on  her 
knees  and  thanked  God,  for  this  injury 
had  saved  him  from  the  army. 

The  effect  of  alcoholic  drink  on  race- 
progress  should  be  considered  in  this 
connection.  Authorities  do  not  agree 
as  to  the  final  result  of  alcohol  in  race- 
selection.  Doubtless,  in  the  long  run, 
the  drunkard  will  be  eliminated ;  and 
perhaps  certain  authors  are  right  in 
regarding  this  as  a  gain  to  the  race. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  is  great  force 

36 


In  Peace 

in  Dr.  Amos  G.  Warner's  remark,  that 
of  all  caustics  gangrene  is  the  most 
expensive.  The  people  of  southern 
Europe  are  relatively  temperate.  They 
have  used  wine  for  centuries,  and  it  is 
thought  by  Archdall  Reid  and  others 
that  the  cause  of  their  temperance  is  to 
be  found  in  this  long  use  of  alcoholic 
beverages.  All  those  with  vitiated  or 
uncontrollable  appetites  have  been  de- 
stroyed in  the  long  experience  with 
wine,  leaving  only  those  with  normal 
tastes  and  normal  ability  of  resistance. 
The  free  use  of  wine  is,  therefore,  in 
this  view,  a  cause  of  final  temperance, 
while  intemperance  rages  only  among 
those  races  which  have  not  long  known 
alcohol,  and  have  not  become  by  selec- 
tion resistant  to  it.  The  savage  races 
which  have  never  known  alcohol  are 
even  less  resistant,  and  are  soonest  de- 
stroyed by  it. 

In  all  this  there  must  be  a  certain 

37 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

element  of  truth.  The  view,  however, 
ignores  the  evil  effect  on  the  nervous 
system  of  long-continued  poisoning, 
even  if  the  poison  be  only  in  moderate 
amounts.  The  temperate  Italian,  with 
his  daily  semi-saturation,  is  no  more  a 
normal  man  than  the  Scotch  farmer 
with  his  occasional  sprees.  The  nerve 
disturbance  which  wine  effects  is  an 
evil,  whether  carried  to  excess  in  regu- 
larity or  irregularity.  We  know  too 
little  of  its  final  result  on  the  race  to 
give  certainty  to  our  speculations.  It 
is,  moreover,  true  that  most  excess  in 
the  use  of  alcohol  is  not  due  to  prim- 
itive appetite.  It  is  drink  which  causes 
appetite,  and  not  appetite  which  seeks 
for  drink.  In  a  given  number  of 
drunkards  but  a  very  few  become  such 
through  inborn  appetite.  It  is  influ- 
ence of  bad  example,  lack  of  courage, 
false  idea  of  manliness,  or  some  defect 
in  character  or  misfortune  in  environ- 

38 


In  Peace 

ment  which  leads  to  the  first  steps  in 
drunkenness.  The  taste  once  estab- 
lished takes  care  of  itself.  In  earlier 
times,  when  the  nature  of  alcohol  was 
unknown  and  total  abstinence  was  un- 
dreamed of,  it  was  the  strong,  the 
boisterous,  the  energetic,  the  apostle  of 
"the  strenuous  Kfe,"  who  carried  all 
these  things  to  excess.  The  wassail 
bowl,  the  bumper  of  ale,  the  flagon  of 
wine, —  all  these  were  the  attribute  of 
the  strong.  We  cannot  say  that  those 
who  sank  in  alcoholism  thereby  illus- 
trated the  survival  of  the  fittest.  Who 
can  say  that,  as  the  Latin  races  became 
temperate,  they  did  not  also  become 
docile  and  weak  ?  In  other  words,  con- 
sidering the  influence  of  alcohol  alone,  ^ 
unchecked  by  an  educated  conscience, 
we  must  admit  that  it  is  the  strong  and 
vigorous,  not  the  weak  and  perverted, 
that  are  destroyed  by  it.  At  the  best,  , 
we  can  only  say  that  alcohoUc  selection 

39 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

is  a  complex  force,  which  makes  for 
temperance — if  at  all,  at  a  fearful  cost 
of  Ufe  which  without  alcohoUc  temp- 
tation would  be  well  worth  saving.  We 
cannot  easily,  with  Mr.  Keid,  regard 
alcohol  as  an  instrument  of  race-purifi- 
cation, nor  beUeve  that  the  growth  of 
abstinence  and  prohibition  only  pre- 
pares the  race  for  a  future  deeper 
plunge  into  dissipation.  If  France, 
through  wine,  has  grown  temperate, 
she  has  grown  tame.  "  New  Mira- 
beaus,"  Carlyle  tells  us,  "  one  hears  not 
of ;  the  wild  kindred  has  gone  out  with 
this,  its  greatest.'*  This  fact,  whatever 
the  cause,  is  typical  of  great,  strong, 
turbulent  men  who  led  the  wild  life  of 
Mirabeau  because  they  knew  nothing 
better. 

The  concentration  of  the  energies  of 
Prance  in  the  one  great  city  of  Paris 
is  again  a  potent  agency  in  the  impov- 
erishment  of  the    blood  of   the   rural 

40 


In  Peace 

districts.  All  great  cities  are  de- 
stroyers of  life.  Scarcely  one  would 
hold  its  own  in  population  or  power, 
were  it  not  for  the  young  men  of  the 
farms.  In  such  destruction,  Paris  has 
ever  taken  the  lead.  The  education  of 
the  middle  classes  in  France  is  almost 
exclusively  a  preparation  for  public  life. 
To  be  an  ofl&cial  in  a  great  city  is  an 
almost  universal  ideal.  This  ideal  but 
few  attain,  and  the  Uves  of  the  rest  are 
largely  wasted.  Not  only  the  would-be 
official,  but  artist,  poet,  musician,  physi- 
cian, or  journalist,  seeks  his  career  in 
Paris.  A  few  may  find  it.  The  others, 
discouraged  by  hopeless  effort  or  viti- 
ated by  corrosion,  faint  and  fall.  Every 
night  some  few  of  these  cast  them- 
selves into  the  Seine.  Every  morning 
they  are  brought  to  the  morgue  behind 
the  old  Church  of  Notre  Dame.  It  is 
a  long  procession  and  a  sad  one  from 
the  provincial  village  to  the  strife  and 

41 


V 


V 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

pitfalls  of  the  great  city,  from  hope  and 
joy  to  absinthe  and  the  morgue.  With 
all  its  pitiful  aspects  the  one  which 
concerns  us  is  the  steady  drain  on  the 
life-blood  of  the  nation,  its  steady  low- 
ering of  the  average  of  the  parent 
stock  of  the  future. 

But  far  more  potent  for  evil  to  the 
race  than  all  these  influences,  large  and 
small,  is  the  one  great  destroyer, — 
War.  War  for  glory,  war  for  gain, 
war  for  dominion,  its  effect  is  the  same, 
whatever  its  alleged  purpose. 


42 


II 

IN    WAR 


n 

In  War. 

Not  long  ago  I  visited  the  town  of 
Novara,  in  northern  Italy.  There,  in  a 
wheat-field,  the  farmers  have  ploughed 
up  skulls  of  men  till  they  have  piled  up 
a  pyramid  ten  or  twelve  feet  high.  Over 
this  pyramid  some  one  has  built  a 
canopy  to  keep  off  the  rain.  These 
were  the  skulls  of  young  men  of  Savoy, 
Sardinia,  and  Austria, —  men  of  eigh- 
teen to  thirty-five  years  of  age,  without 
physical  blemish  so  far  as  may  be, — 
peasants  from  the  farms  and  workmen 
from  the  shops,  who  met  at  Novara  to 
kiU  each  other  over  a  matter  in  which 
they  had  very  Kttle  concern.  Should 
the  Prince  of  Savoy  sit  on  his  unstable 
throne  or  yield  it  to  some  one  else, 
this  was  the  question.  It  matters  not 
the   decision.      History    doubtless    re- 

45 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

cords  it,  as  she  does  many  matters  of 
less  moment.  But  this  fact  concerns 
us, —  here  in  thousands  they  died. 
Farther  on,  Frenchmen,  Austrians,  and 
Itahans  fell  together  at  Magenta,  in 
the  same  cause.  You  know  the  color 
that  we  call  Magenta,  the  hue  of  the 
blood  that  flowed  out  under  the  oUve- 
trees.  Go  over  Italy  as  you  will, 
there  is  scarcely  a  spot  not  crimsoned 
by  the  blood  of  France,  scarcely  a  rail- 
way station  without  its  pile  of  French 
skulls.  You  can  trace  them  across  to 
Egypt,  to  the  foot  of  the  Pyramids. 
You  will  find  them  in  Germany, —  at 
Jena  and  Leipzig,  at  Liitzen  and  Baut- 
zen and  Austerlitz.  You  will  find 
them  in  Russia,  at  Moscow;  in  Bel- 
gium, at  Waterloo.  "  A  boy  can  stop 
a  bullet  as  well  as  a  man,"  said  Na- 
poleon ;  and  with  the  rest  are  the  skulls 
and  bones  of  boys,  "  ere  evening  to  be 
trodden  Hke  the  grass."     ''  Born  to  be 

46 


Li  War 

food  for  powder"  was  the  grim  epi- 
gram of  the  day,  summing  up  the  life 
of  the  French  peasant.  Read  the 
dreary  record  of  the  glory  of  France, 
the  slaughter  at  Waterloo,  the  wretched 
failure  of  Moscow,  the  miserable  deeds 
of  Sedan,  the  waste  of  Algiers,  the 
poison  of  Madagascar,  the  crimes  of 
Indo-China,  the  hideous  results  of  bar- 
rack vice  and  its  entail  of  disease  and 
steriUty,  and  you  wiU  understand  the 
"  Man  of  the  Hoe."  The  man  who 
is  left,  the  man  whom  glory  cannot  use, 
becomes  the  father  of  the  future  men 
of  France.  As  the  long-horn  cattle 
reappear  in  a  neglected  or  abused  herd 
of  Durhams,  so  comes  forth  the  abori- 
ginal man,  the  "  Man  of  the  Hoe,"  in  a 
wasted  race  of  men. 

A  recent  French  cartoon  pictures  the 
peasant  of  a  hundred  years  ago  plough- 
ing in  a  field,  a  gilded  marquis  on  his 
back,   tapping     his    gilded    snuff-box. 

47 


^ 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

Another  cartoon  shows  the  French 
peasant  of  to-day,  still  at  the  plough. 
On  his  back  is  an  armed  soldier  who 
should  be  at  another  plough,  while  on 
the  back  of  the  soldier  rides  the  second 
burden  of  Shylock  the  money-lender, 
more  cruel  and  more  heavy  even  than 
the  dainty  marquis  of  the  old  regime. 
So  long  as  war  remains,  the  burden  of 
France  cannot  be  shifted. 

In  the  loss  of  war  we  count  not 
alone  the  man  who  falls  or  whose  life 
is  tainted  with  disease.  There  is  more 
than  one  in  the  man's  life.  The  bullet 
that  pierces  his  hjpart  goes  to  the  heart 
of  at  least  one  other.  For  each  soldier 
has  a  sweetheart ;  and  the  best  of  these 
die,  too, —  so  far  as  the  race  is  con- 
cerned,—  if  they  remain  single  for  his 
sake.  I 

In  the  old  Scottish  ballad  of  the 
"Flower  of  the  Forest''  this  thought 
is  set  forth  :  — 

48 


In  War 

"  I've  heard  the  lilting  at  each  ewe-milking, 
Lassies  a-lilting  before  the  dawn  of  day. 
But  now  they  are  moaning  on  ilka  green  loan- 
ing, 
For  the  "  Flower  of  the  Forest"  is  a'  wed 
away." 

Euskin  once  said  that  "  war  is  the 
foundation  of  all  high  virtues  and  fac- 
ulties of  men."  As  v^ell  might  the 
maker  of  phrases  say  that  fire  is  the 
builder  of  the  forest,  for  only  in  the 
flame  of  destruction  do  we  reaUze 
the  warmth  and  strength  that  lie  in 
the  heart  of  oak.  Another  writer, 
Hardwick,  declares  that  "war  is  es- 
sential to  the  life  of  a  nation  ;  war 
strengthens  a  nation  morally,  mentally 
and  physically."  Such  statements  as 
these  set  all  history  at  defiance.  War 
can  only  waste  and  corrupt.  "  All 
war  is  bad,"  says  Benjamin  Franklin, 
"  some  only  worse  than  others."  "  War 
has  its  origin  in  the  evil  passions  of 
men,"  and  even  when  unavoidable   or 

49 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

righteous,  its  effects  are  most  forlorn. 

r  The  final  effect  of  each  strife  for  em- 
pire has  been  the  degradation  or  extinc- 
tion of  the  nation  which  led  in  the 
struggle.3  i2^c^  7 
£^  Greece  died  because  the  men  who 
made  her  glory  had  all  passed  away 
and  left  none  of  their  kin  and  there- 
fore none  of  their  kind.  3  '^  'Tis  Greece, 
but  living  Greece  no  more "  ;  for  the 

!  Greek  of  to-day,  for  the  most  part, 
\^'  never  came  from  the  loins  of  Leonidas 
or  Miltiades.  He  is  the  son  of  the 
stable-boys  and  scullions  and  slaves  of 
the  day  of  her  glory,  those  of  whom 
imperial  Greece  could  make  no  use  in 
her  conquest  of  Asia.  "  Most  of  the  old 
Greek  race,"  says  Mr.  W.  H.  Ireland, 
"  has  been  swept  away,  and  the  coimtry 
is  now  inhabited  by  persons  of  Sla- 
vonic descent.  Indeed,  there  is  strong 
ground  for  the  statement  that  there 
was  more  of  the  old   heroic  blood  of 

50 


In  War 

Hellas  in  the  Turkish  army  of  Edhem 
Pasha  than  in  the  soldiers  of  King 
George,  who  fled  before  them  three 
years  ago."  King  George  himself  is 
only  an  alien  placed  on  the  Grecian 
throne  to  suit  the  convenience  of  the 
outside  powers,  which  to  the  ancient 
Greeks  were  merely  factions  of  bar- 
barians. 

^'  Earth,  render  back  from  out  thy  breast 
A  remnant  of  our  Spartan  dead  I 
Of  the  three  hundred  grant  but  three 
To  make  a  new  Thermopylae  I  " 

But  there  were  not  even  three  —  not 
even  one — "to  make  another  Mara- 
thon/' and  the  Turkish  troops  swept 
over  the  historic  country  with  no  other 
hindrance  than  the  effortless  deprecation 
of  Christendom. 

Why  did  Rome  fall?  It  was  not  I 
because  untrained  hordes  were  stronger  \ 
than   disciplined   legions.     It   was  not  \ 

51  ' 


)l 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

that  she  grew  proud,  luxurious,  corrupt, 
and  thereby  gained  a  legacy  of  physical 
weakness.  We  read  of  her  wealth,  her 
extravagance,  her  indolence  and  vice; 
but  all  this  caused  only  the  downfall  of 
the  enervated,  the  vicious,  and  the  in- 
dolent. The  Roman  legions  did  not 
riot  in  wealth.  The  Roman  generals 
were  not  all  entangled  in  the  wiles  of 
Cleopatra. 

"The  Roman  Empire,"  says  Seeley, 
"  perished  for  want  of  men.'*  You  will 
find  this  fact  on  the  pages  of  every 
history,  though  few  have  pointed  out 
war  as  the  jfinal  and  necessary  cause 
of  the  Roman  downfall.  In  his  recent 
noble  history  of  the  "  Downfall  of  the 
Ancient  World"  ("Der  Untergang  der 
Antiken  Welt,"  1897),  Professor  Otto 
Seeck,  of  Greifeswald,  makes  this  fact 
very  apparent.  The  cause  of  the  fall 
of  Rome  is  found  in  the  "extinction 
of  the   best"  {"Die  Ausrottung  der 

52 


In  War 

Besten^^)^  and  all  that  remains  to  the 
historian  is  to  give  the  details  of  this 
extermination.  He  says,  "In  Greece 
a  wealth  of  spiritual  power  went  down 
in  the  suicidal  wars."  In  Rome  "  Ma- 
rius  and  Cinna  slew  the  aristocrats 
by  hundreds  and  thousands.  Sulla  de- 
stroyed no  less  thoroughly  the  demo- 
crats, and  whatever  of  noble  blood  sur- 
vived fell  as  an  offering  to  the  pro- 
scription of  the  triumvirate."  "The 
Romans  had  less  of  spontaneous  power 
to  lose  than  the  Greeks,  and  so  desola- 
tion came  to  them  all  the  sooner.  He 
who  was  bold  enough  to  rise  poKti- 
cally  was  almost  without  exception 
thrown  to  the  ground.  Only  cowards 
remained^  and  from  their  brood  came 
forward  the  new  generations.  Cowar- 
dice showed  itself  in  lack  of  originality 
and  slavish  following  of  masters  and  tra- 
ditions." Had  the  Romans  been  still 
aUve,  the  Romans  of  the  old  republic^ 

53 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

neither  inside  nor  outside  forces  could^ 
have   worked  the  fall  of  Eome.     But  \ 
the   true   Romans   passed   away  early.  I 
Even  Caesar  notes  the  "  dire  scarcity  of 
men  "  ("  huvrjv  oXiyavOpoTruiv  ").    Still  there 
were  always  men  in  plenty,  such  as  they 
were.     Of  this  there  is  abundant  testi- 
mony.    Slaves  and  camp-followers  were 
always  in  evidence.     It  was  the  men  of 
strength  and  character, "  the  small  farm- 
ers," the  "  hardy  dwellers  on  the  flanks 
of  the  Apennines,"  who  were  gone. 

"  The  period  of  the  Antonines  was 
a  period  of  sterihty  and  barrenness. 
The  human  harvest  was  bad."  Augus- 
tus offered  bounties  on  marriage  until 
"  ceUbacy  became  the  most  comfortable 
and  most  expensive  condition  of  life." 
"  Marriage,"  says  Metellus,  "  is  a  duty 
which,  however  painful,  every  citizen 
ought  manfully  to  discharge." 

^^The  mainspring  of  the  Roman 
army,"   says   Hodgkin,  ^^for   centuries 

54 


In  War 

had  been  the  patient  strength  and 
courage,  capacity  for  enduring  hard- 
shipSj  instinctive  submission  to  military 
discipline,  of  the  population  which  lined 
the  ranges  of  the  Apennines." 

Berry  states  that  an  "  effect  of  the 
wars  was  that  the  ranks  of  the  small 
farmers  were  decimated,  while  the  num- 
ber of  slaves  who  did  not  serve  in  the 
army  multiplied."  Thus  "  Vir  gave 
place  to  HoTnOy'  real  men  to  mere- 
human  beings. 

With  the  failure  of  men  grew  the 
strength  of  the  mob,  and  of  the  em- 
peror, its  exponent.  "The  little  fin- 
ger of  Constantine  was  stronger  than 
the  loins  of  Augustus."  At  the  end 
"  the  barbarians  settled  and  peopled  the  I 
Roman  Empire  rather  than  conquered' 
it."  "The  Roman  world  would  not 
have  yielded  to  the  barbaric,  were  it  not 
decidedly  inferior  in  force."  Through 
the  weakness  of  men  the  emperor  as- 

55 


Hie  Blood  of  the  Nation 

sumed  divine  right.  Dr.  Zumpt  says : 
"  Govermnent,  having  assumed  godhead, 
took  at  the  same  time  the  appurtenances 
of  it.  Officials  multipUed.  Subjects 
lost  their  rights.  Abject  fear  paralyzed 
the  people,  and  those  that  ruled  were 
intoxicated  with  insolence  and  cruelty." 

"  The  Emperor,"  says  Professor  See- 
ley,  ^^  possessed  in  the  army  an  over- 
whelming force,  over  which  citizens 
had  no  influence,  which  was  totally 
deaf  to  reason  or  eloquence,  which  had 
no  patriotism  because  it  had  no  coun- 
try, which  had  no  humanity  because  it 
had  no  domestic  ties."  "  There  runs 
through  Roman  Hterature  a  brigand's 
and  a  barbarian's  contempt  for  honest 
industry."  "  The  worst  government  is 
that  which  is  most  worshipped  as 
divine." 

So  runs  the  word  of  the  historian. 
The  elements  are  not  hard  to  find, — 
extinction  of   manly   blood,  extinction 

56 


In  War 

of  freedom  of  thought  and  action,  in- 
crease of  wealth  gained  by  plunder, 
loss  of  national  existence. 

So  fell  Greece  and  Rome,  Carthage^ 
and  Egypt,  the  Arabs  and  the  Moors, 
because,  their  warriors  dying,  the  nation  J        / 
bred  real  men  no  more.  (  The  man  of        ^ 
the  strong  arm  and  the  quick  eye  gave  r 
.  place  to  the  slave,  the  pariah,  the  man 
with  the  hoe,  whose  lot  changes  not 
with  the  change  of  dynasties.  -J 

Other  nations  of  Europe  may  furnish 
illustrations  in  greater  or  less  degree. 
Germany  guards  her  men,  and  reduces 
the  waste  of  war  to  a  minimum.  She  is 
"military,  but  not  warlike";  and  this 
distinction  means  a  great  deal  from  the  [ 
point  of  view  of  this  discussion.  In  \ 
.  modern  times  the  greatest  loss  of  Ger- 
many has  been  not  from  war,  but  from 
emigration.  If  the  men  who  have  left 
Germany  are  of  higher  type  than  those 
who  remain  at  home,  then  the  blood  of 

57 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

the  nation  is  impoverished.  That  this 
is  the  case  the  Germans  in  Germany 
are  usually  not  wilUng  to  admit.  On 
the  other  hand,  those  competent  to 
judge  the  German-American  find  no 
type  of  men  in  the  Old  World  his 
mental  or  physical  superior. 

The  tendency  of  emigration,  whether 
to  cities  or  to  other  countries,  is  to 
weaken  the  rural  population.  An  illus- 
tration of  the  results  of  checking  this 
form  of  selection  is  seen  in  the  Bava- 
rian town  of  Oberammergau.  This  little 
village,  with  a  population  not  exceeding 
fifteen  hundred,  has  a  surprisingly  large 
number  of  men  possessing  talent,  men- 
tal and  physical  qualities  far  above  the 
average  even  in  Germany.  The  cause 
of  this  Hes  in  the  Passion  Play,  for 
which  for  nearly  three  centuries  Ober- 
ammergau has  been  noted.  The  best 
intellects  and  the  noblest  talents  that 
arise   in  the  town  find  full   scope   for 

68 


In  War 

their  exercise  in  this  play.  Those  who 
are  idle,  vicious,  or  stupid  are  excluded 
from  it.  Thus,  in  the  long  run,  the 
operation  of  selection  is  to  retain  those 
whom  the  play  can  use  and  to  exclude 
all  others.  To  weigh  the  force  of  this 
selected  heredity,  we  have  only  to  com- 
pare the  quality  of  Oberammergau  with 
that  of  other  Bavarian  towns,  as,  for 
example,  her  sister  village  of  Unteram- 
mergau,  some  two  miles  lower  down,  in 
the  same  valley. 

Switzerland  is  the  land  of  freedom, 
the  land  of  peace.  But  in  earlier  times 
some  of  the  thrifty  cantons  sent  forth 
their  men  as  hireling  soldiers  to  serve 
for  pay  under  the  flag  of  whomsoever 
might  pay  their  cost.  There  was  once 
a  proverb  in  the  French  Court,  "  Pas 
d! argent^  pas  de  Suisses  "  (No  money, 
no  Swiss) ;  for  the  agents  of  the  free  re- 
public drove  a  close  bargain. 

In  Lucerne  stands  one  of  the  noblest 

59 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

monuments  in  all  the  world,  the  memo- 
rial of  the  Swiss  guard  of  Louis  XVI., 
killed  by  the  mob  at  the  palace  of  Ver- 
sailles. It  is  carved  in  the  solid  rock 
of  a  vertical  cliff  above  a  great  spring 
in  the  outskirts  of  the  city, —  a  Hon  of 
heroic  size,  a  spear  thrust  through  its 
body,  guarding  in  its  dying  paws  the 
Bourbon  lihes  and  the  shield  of  France. 
And  the  traveller,  Carlyle  tells  us, 
should  visit  Lucerne  and  her  monument, 
"  not  for  Thorwaldsen's  sake  alone,  but 
for  the  sake  of  the  German  Biederkeit 
and  Tapferkeitj  the  valor  which  is  worth 
and  truth,  be  it  Saxon,  be  it  Swiss." 

Beneath  the  Hon  are  the  names  of 
those  whose  devotion  it  commemorates. 
And  with  the  thought  of  their  courage 
comes  the  thought  of  the  pity  of  it,  the 
waste  of  brave  life  in  a  world  that  has 
none  too  much.  It  may  be  fancy,  but 
it  seems  to  me  that,  as  I  go  about  in 
Switzerland,  I   can   distinguish  by  the 

60 


In  War 

character  of  the  men  who  remain  those 
cantons  who  sent  forth  mercenary  troops 
from  those  who  kept  their  own  for  their 
own  upbuilding.  Perhaps  for  other  rea- 
sons than  this  Lucerne  is  weaker  than 
Graubiinden,  and  Unterwalden  less  virile 
than  Httle  Appenzell.  In  any  event, 
the  matter  is  worthy  of  consideration ; 
for  this  is  absolutely  certain, —  just  in 
proportion  to  its  extent  and  thorough- 
ness is  military  selection  a  cause  of  de- 
cline. ^ 
Holland  has  become  a  nation  of  old  ' 
men,  rich,  comfortable,  and  unprogres-  ( 
sive.  Her  sons  have  died  in  the  fields 
of  Java,  the  swamps  of  Achin,  wherever 
Holland's  thrifty  spirit  has  built  up 
nations  of  slaves.  It  is  said  that  Batavia 
alone  has  a  million  of  Dutch  graves. 
The  armies  of  Holland  to-day  are  re- 
cruited in  every  port.  Dutch  blood  is 
too  precious  to  be  longer  spilled  in  her 
enterprises. 

61 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

I  Spain  died  of  empire  centuries  ago. 
She  has  never  crossed  our  path.  It  was 
only  her  ghost  which  walked  at  Manila 
I /and  Santiago.  In  1630  the  Augustin- 
ian  friar  La  Puente  thus  wrote  of  the 
fate  of  Spain  :  "  Against  the  credit  for 
redeemed  souls  I  set  the  cost  of  arma- 
das and  the  sacrifice  of  soldiers  and 
friars  sent  to  the  Philippines.  And  this 
I  count  the  chief  loss ;  for  mines  give 
silver,  and  forests  give  timber,  but  only 
Spain  gives  Spaniards,  and  she  may 
give  so  many  that  she  may  be  left  deso- 
late, and  constrained  to  bring  up  stran- 
gers' children  instead  of  her  own." 
"  This  is  Castile,"  said  a  Spanish  knight; 
"  she  makes  men  and  wastes  them." 
"  This  sublime  and  terrible  phrase,"  says 
Lieutenant  Carlos  Oilman  Calkins,  from 
whom  I  have  received  both  these  quota- 
tions, "  siuns  up  Spanish  history." 

The  warlike  nation  of  to-day  is  the 
decadent  nation  of  to-morrow.     It  has 

62 


In  War 

ever  been  so,  and  in  the  nature  of  things 
it  must  ever  be. 

In  his  charming  studies  of  "  Feudal 
and  Modern  Japan/'  Mr.  Arthur  Knapp 
returns  again  and  again  to  the  great 
marvel  of  Japan's  miUtary  prowess  after 
more  than  two  hundred  years  of  peace. 
It  is  astonishing  to  him  that,  after  more 
than  six  generations  in  which  physical 
courage  has  not  been  demanded,  these 
virile  virtues  should  be  found  unim- 
paired. We  can  readily  see  that  this  is 
just  what  we  should  expect.  In  times  of 
peace  there  is  no  slaughter  of  the  strong, 
no  sacrifice  of  the  courageous.  In  the 
peaceful  struggle  for  existence  there 
is  a  premium  placed  on  these  virt- 
ues. The  virile  and  the  brave  survive. 
The  idle,  weak,  and  dissipated  go  to 
the  wall.  If  after  two  hundred  years 
of  incessant  battle  Japan  still  remained 
virile  and  warKke,  that  would  indeed 
be  the  marvel.     But  that  marvel  no  na- 

63 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

tion  has  ever  seen.  It  is  doubtless  true 
that  warUke  traditions  are  most  persist- 
ent with  nations  most  frequently  en- 
gaged in  war.  But  the  traditions  ofi 
war  and  the  physical  strength  to  gain 
victories  are  very  different  things. 
Other  things  being  equal,  the  nation 
which  has  known  least  of  war  is  the 
one  most  likely  to  develop  the  "  strong 
battalions"  with  whom  victory  must 
rest. 

What  shall  we  say  of  England  and 
her  hundred  petty  wars  "  smouldering  " 
in  every  part  of  the  globe  ? 

Statistics  we  have  none,  and  no  evi- 
dence of  tangible  decline  that  Enghsh- 
men  will  not  indignantly  repudiate. 
Besides,  in  the  struggle  for  national 
influences,  England  has  had  many  ad- 
vantages which  must  hide  or  neutralize 
the  waste  of  war.  In  default  of  facts 
imquestioned,  we  may  appeal  to  the 
poets,  letting  their  testimony  as  to  the 

64 


In  War 

reversal  of  selection  stand  for  what  it  is 
worth.  Kipling  tells  us  of  the  cost  of 
the  rule  of  the  sea  :  — 

"  We  have  fed  our  sea  for  a  thousand  years, 
And  she  calls  us,  still  unfed  ; 
Though  there's  never  a  wave  of  all  her  waves 
But  marks  our  English  dead. 

<'  If  blood  be  the  price  of  admiralty. 
Lord  God,  we  have  paid  it  in  full." 

Again,  referring  to  dominion  on  land, 
he  says :  — 

"  Walk  wide  of  the  widow  of  Windsor, 
For  half  of  creation  she  owns. 
We've  bought  her  the  same  with  the  sword 
and  the  flame, 
And  we've  salted  it  down  with  our  bones. 
Poor  beggars,  it's  blue  with  our  bones." 

Finer  than  this  are  the  Knes  in  the 
''  Revelry  of  the  Dying/'  written  by  a 
British  of&cer,  Bartholomew  DowKng, 
it  is  said,  who  died  in  the  plague  in 
India :  — 

65 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

''  Cut  off  from  the  land  that  bore  us, 

Betrayed  by  the  land  we  find, 
When  the  brightest  are  gone  before  us. 

And  the  dullest  are  left  behind. 
So  stand  to  your  glasses  steady, 

Tho'  a  moment  the  color  flies  ; 
Here's  a  cup  to  the  dead  already 

And  huzza  for  the  next  that  dies  I  " 


The  stately  "Ave  Imperatrix"  of 
Oscar  Wilde,  bright  flicker  of  genius 
in  a  wretched  life,  contains  lines  that 
ought  not  to  be  forgotten :  — 

'*  O  thou  whose  wounds  are  never  healed, 
Whose  weary  race  is  never  run, 
O  Cromwell's  England,  must  thou  yield 
For  every  foot  of  ground  a  son  ? 

"  What  matter  if  our  galleys  ride 
Pine-forest-like  on  every  main  ? 
Ruin  and  wreck  are  at  our  side, 
Stern  warders  of  the  house  of  pain. 

''  Where  are  the  brave,  the  strong,  the  fleet, 
The  flower  of  England's  chivalry? 
Wild  grasses  are  their  winding-sheet. 
And  sobbing  waves  their  threnody. 

66 


In  War 

^' Peace,  peace,  we  wrong  our  noble  dead 
To  vex  their  solemn  slumber  so  ; 
But  childless  and  with  thorn-crowned  head 
Up  the  steep  road  must  England  go  !  " 

We  have  here  the  same  motive,  the 
same  lesson,  which  Byron  appUes  to 
Rome :  — 

''  The  Niobe  of  IN'ations  —  there  she  stands, 
Crownless  and  childless  in  her  voiceless  woe, 
An  empty  urn  within  her  withered  hands, 
Whose  sacred  dust  was  scattered  long  ago  !  " 

It  suggests  the  inevitable  end  of  all 
empire,  of  all  dominion  of  man  over  man 
by  force  of  arms.  More  than  all  who 
fall  in  battle  or  are  wasted  in  the  camps, 
the  nation  misses  the  "  fair  women  and 
brave  men  "  who  should  have  been  the 
descendants  of  the  strong  and  the 
manly.  If  we  may  personify  the  spirit 
of  the  nation,  it  grieves  most  not  over 
its  "  unreturning  brave,"  but  over  those 
who  might  have  been,  but  never  were, 

67 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

and  who,  so  long  as  history  lasts,  can 
never  be. 

Against  this  view  is  urged  the  state- 
ment that  the  soldier  is  not  the  best,  but 
the  worst,  product  of  the  blood  of  the 
English  nation.  Tommy  Atkins  comes 
from  the  streets,  the  wharves,  the  gradu- 
ate of  the  London  slums,  and  if  the  em- 
pire is  "  blue  with  his  bones,"  it  is,  after 
all,  to  the  gain  of  England  that  her  better 
blood  is  saved  for  home  consumption, 
and  that,  as  matters  are,  the  wars  of 
England  make  no  real  drain  of  English 
blood. 

In  so  far  as  this  is  true,  of  course  the 
present  argument  fails.  If  war  in  Eng- 
land is  a  means  of  race  improvement, 
the  lesson  I  would  read  does  not  apply 
to  her.  If  England's  best  do  not  fall 
on  the  field  of  battle,  then  we  may  not 
accuse  war  of  their  destruction.  The 
fact  could  be  shown  by  statistics.  If 
the  men  who  have  fallen  in  England's 

68 


In  War 

wars,  officers  and  soldiers,  rank  and  file^ 
are  not  on  the  whole  fairly  representa- 
tive of  "  the  flower  of  England's  chiv- 
alry," then  fame  has  been  singularly 
given  to  deception.  V/e  have  been  told 
that  the  glories  of  Blenheim,  Trafalgar, 
Waterloo,  Majuba  Hill,  were  won  by 
real  Enghshmen.  And  this,  in  fact,  is 
the  truth.  In  every  nation  of  Europe 
the  men  chosen  for  the  army  are 
above  the  average  of  their  fellows. 
The  absolute  best  doubtless  they  are 
not,  but  still  less  are  they  the  worst. 
Doubtless,  too,  physical  excellence  is 
more  considered  than  moral  or  mental 
strength ;  and  certainly,  again,  the 
more  noble  the  cause,  the  more  worthy 
the  class  of  men  who  will  risk  their 
lives  for  it. 

Not  to  confuse  the  point  by  modern 
instances,  it  is  doubtless  true  that  better 
men  fell  on  both  sides  when  "  Kentish 
Sir   Byng  stood  for  the    King"  than 

69 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

when  the  British  arms  forced  the  opium 
trade  on  China.  No  doubt,  in  our  own 
country  better  men  fell  at  Bunker  Hill 
or  Cowpens  than  at  Cerro  Gordo  or 
Chapultepec.  The  lofty  cause  demands 
the  lofty  sacrifice. 

It  is  the  shame  of  England  that 
most  of  her  many  wars  in  our  day  have 
cost  her  very  little.  They  have  been 
scrambles  of  the  mob  or  with  the  mob, 
not  triumphs  of  democracy. 
/  There  was  once  a  time  when  the 
jptruggles  of  armies  resulted  in  a  sur- 
l/vival  of  the  fittest,  when  the  race  was 
indeed  to  the  swift  and  the  battle  to 
the  strong.  The  invention  of  "vil- 
lanous  gunpowder"  has  changed  all 
this.  Except  the  kind  of  warfare 
called  guerilla,  the  quality  of  the  in- 
dividual has  ceased  to  be  much  of  a 
factor.  The  clown  can  shoot  down  the 
hero,  and  "  doesn't  have  to  look  the 
hero  in  the  face  as  he  does  so."     The 

70 


In  War 

shell  destroys  the  clown  and  hero  alike,  ] 
and  the  machine  gun  mows  down  whole 
ranks  impartially.     There  is  little  play 
for  selection  in  modern  war  save  what  i 
is  shown  in  the  process  o£  enhstment. 

America  has  grown  strong  with  the 
strength  of  peace,  the  spirit  of  democ- 
racy. Her  wars  have  been  few. 
Were  it  not  for  the  mob  spirit,  they 
would  have  been  still  fewer;  but  in 
most  of  them  she  could  not  choose 
but  fight.  Volunteer  soldiers  have 
swelled  her  armies,  men  who  went  forth 
of  their  own  free  will,  knowing  whither 
they  were  going,  beheving  their  acts  to 
be  right,  and  taking  patiently  whatever 
the  fates  might  hold  in  store. 

The  feeling  for  the  righteousness  of 
the  cause,  "  with  the  flavor  of  religion 
in  it,"  says  Charles  Ferguson,  "has 
made  the  volunteer  the  mighty  soldier 
he  has  always  been  since  the  days  of 
Naseby   and   Marston   Moor."       Only 

71 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

with  volunteer  soldiers  can  democracy 
go  into  war.  When  America  fights 
with  professional  troops,  she  will  be  no 
longer  America.  We  shall  then  be, 
with  the  rest  of  the  militant  world, 
under  mob  rule.  "  It  is  the  mission  of 
democracy/'  says  Ferguson  again,  "  to 
put  down  the  rule  of  the  mob.  In 
monarchies  and  aristocracies  it  is  the 
mob  that  rules.  It  is  puerile  to  suppose 
that  kingdoms  are  made  by  kings. 
The  king  could  do  nothing  if  the  mob 
did  not  throw  up  its  cap  when  the  king 
rides  by.  The  king  is  consented  to  by 
the  mob  because  of  that  which  in  him 
is  mob-like.  The  mob  loves  glory  and 
prizes.  So  does  the  king.  If  he 
loved  beauty  and  justice,  the  mob 
would  shout  for  him  while  the  fine 
words  were  sounding  in  the  air;  but 
he  could  never  celebrate  a  jubilee  or 
establish  a  dynasty.  When  the  crowd 
gets  ready  to  demand  justice  and  beauty, 

72 


In  War 

it  becomes  a  democracy,  and  has  done 
with  kings." 

It  was  at  Lexington  that  "  the  em- 
battled farmers  "  "  fired  the  shot  heard 
round  the  world."  To  them  life  was 
of  less  value  than  a  principle,  the  prin- 
ciple written  by  Cromwell  on  the  statute 
book  of  Parliament :  "  All  just  powers 
under  God  are  derived  from  the  con- 
sent of  the  people."  Since  this  war 
many  patriotic  societies  have  arisen, 
finding  their  inspiration  in  personal 
descent  from  those  who  fought  for 
American  independence.  The  assump- 
tion, well  justified  by  facts,  is  that  these 
were  a  superior  type  of  men,  and  that 
to  have  had  such  names  in  our  personal 
ancestry  is  of  itself  a  cause  for  think- 
ing more  highly  of  ourselves.  In  our 
little  private  round  of  peaceful  duties 
we  feel  that  we  might  have  wrought 
the  deeds  of  Putnam  and  Allen,  of 
Marion   and   Greene,    of   our    Revolu- 

73 


/ 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

tionary  ancestors,  whoever  they  may 
have  been.  But  if  those  who  survived 
were  nobler  than  the  mass,  so  also  were 
those  who  fell.  If  we  go  over  the 
record  of  brave  men  and  wise  women 
whose  fathers  fought  at  Lexington,  we 
must  think  also  of  the  men  and  women 
who  shall  never  be,  whose  right  to 
exist  was  cut  short  at  this  same  battle. 
It  is  a  costly  thing  to  kill  off  men,  for 
in  men  alone  can  national  greatness 
consist. 

But  sometimes  there  is  no  other  al- 
ternative. It  happenfed  once  that  for 
"  every  drop  of  blood  drawn  by  the 
lash  another  must  be  drawn  by  the 
sword."  It  cost  us  a  milKon  of  lives  to 
get  rid  of  slavery.  And  this  million, 
North  and  South,  was  the  "  best  that 
the  nation  could  bring."  North  and 
South,  the  nation  was  impoverished  by 
the  loss.  The  gaps  they  left  are 
filled   to    all   appearance.       There  are 

74 


In  War 

relatively  few  of  us  left  to-day  in  whose 
hearts  the  scars  of  forty  years  ago 
are  still  unhealing.  But  a  new  genera- 
tion has  grown  up  of  men  and  women 
born  since  the  war.  They  have  taken 
the  nation's  problems  into  their  hands, 
but  theirs  are  hands  not  so  strong  or  so 
clean  as  though  the  men  that  are  stood 
shoulder  to  shoulder  with  the  men  that 
might  have  been.  The  men  that  died 
in  "  the  weary  time "  had  better  stuff 
in  them  than  the  father  of  the  average 
man  of  to-day.  ^ 

Read  again  Brownell's  rhymed  roll 
of  honor,  and  we  shall  see  its  deeper 
meaning :  — 

"Allen,  who  died  for  others, 

Bryan  of  gentle  fame, 
And  the  brave  New  England  brothers 

Who  have  left  us  Lowell's  name; 
Bayard,  who  knew  not  fear. 

True  as  the  knight  of  yore, 
And  Putnam  and  Paul  Eevere, 

Worthy  the  names  they  bore; 

75 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

Wain  Wright,  steadfast  and  true, 

Rodgers  of  brave  sea-blood, 
And  Craven,  with  ship  and  crew, 

Sunk  in  the  salt-sea  flood; 
Terrill,  dead  where  he  fought, 

Wallace,  that  would  not  yield; 
Sumner,  who  vainly  bought 

A  grave  on  the  foughten  field, 
But  died  ere  the  end  he  saw. 

With  years  and  battles  outworn  ; 
There  was  Harmon  of  Kennesaw, 
And  Ulric  Dahlgren,  and  Shaw 

That  slept  with  his  Hope  Forlorn  ; 
Lytle,  soldier  and  bard, 

And  the  Ellets,  sire  and  son  ; 
Ransom,  all  grandly  scarred. 
And  Redfield,  no  more  on  guard. 

But  Alatoona  is  won  I  " 

So    runs     the     record,    page     after 

page : — 

"  All  such,  and  many  another, 
Ah  I  list  how  long  to  name  I  " 

And  these  were  the  names  of  the  offi- 
cers only.  Not  less  worthy  were  the  men 
in  the  ranks.  It  is  the  paradox  of  democ- 
racy that  its  greatness  is  chiefly  in  the 

76 


In  War 

ranks.     "  Are  all  the  common  men  so 
grand,  and  all  the  titled  ones  so  mean  ?  *' 

North   or   South,  it  was  the   same. 
"  Send  forth  the  best  ye  breed  "  was  the 
call  on  both  sides  alike,  and  to  this  call 
both  sides  alike  responded.     As  it  will 
take  "  centuries  of  peace  and  prosperity 
to  make  good  the  tall  statures  mowed 
down  in  the  Napoleonic  wars,'*  so  hke 
centuries   of   wisdom    and   virtue    are 
needed  to  restore  to  our  nation  its  lost 
inheritance  of  patriotism, —  not  the  ca- 
pacity for  patriotic  talk,   for   of   that 
there   has  been  no  abatement,  but  of 
that  faith  and  truth  which  "  on  war's 
red  touchstone  rang  true  metal."    With  / 
all  this  we  can  never  know  how  great  is  / 
our  real  misfortune,  nor  see  how  much/ 
the  men  that  are  fall  short  of  the  menj 
that  ought  to  have  been.  j 

It  will  be  said  that  all  this  is  exagger- 
ation, that  war  is  but  one  influence 
among  many,  and  that  each  and  all  of 

77 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

these  forms  of  destructive  selection  may 
find  its  antidote.  This  is  very  true. 
The  antidote  is  found  in  the  spirit  of 
democracy,  and  the  spirit  of  democracy 
is  the  spirit  of  peace.  Doubtless  these 
pages  constitute  an  exaggeration.  They 
were  written  for  that  purpose.  I  would 
show  the  "  ugly,  old,  and  wrinkled  truth 
stripped  clean  of  all  the  vesture  that 
beguiles."  To  see  anything  clearly  and 
separately  is  to  exaggerate  it.  The 
naked  truth  is  always  a  caricature  unless 
clothed  in  conventions,  fragments  taken 
from  lesser  truths.  The  moral  law  is  an 
exaggeration :  "  The  soul  that  sinneth, 
it  shall  die."  Doubtless  one  war  will 
not  ruin  a  nation.  Doubtless  it  will  nofk/ 
destroy  its  virility  or  impair  its  blood. (V 
Doubtless  a  dozen  wars  may  do  all  this.  \ 
The  difference  is  one  of  degree  alone ; 
I  wish  only  to  point  out  the  tendency. 
LThat  the  death  of  the  strong  is  a  true 
cause  of  the  decline  of  nations  is  a  fact 

78 


K 


In  War 

beyond  cavil  or  question. 3 The  "man 
who  is  left "  holds  always  the  future  in 
his  grasp.  One  of  the  great  books  of 
our  new  century  will  be  some  day  writ- 
ten on  the  selection  of  men,  the  screen- 
ing of  human  life  through  the  actions 
of  man  and  the  operation  of  the  institu- 
tions men  have  built  up.  It  will  be  a 
survey  of  the  stream  of  social  history, 
its  whirls  and  eddies,  rapids  and  still 
waters,  and  the  effect  of  each  and  all  of 
its  conditions  on  the  heredity  of  men. 
The  survival  of  the  fit  and  the  unfit  in 
all  degrees  and  conditions  will  be  its  sub- 
ject-matter. This  book  will  be  written, 
not  roughly  and  hastily,  Kke  the  present 
fragmentary  essay,  still  less  will  it  be  a 
brilliant  effort  of  some  analytical  imagi- 
nation. It  will  set  down  soberly  and 
statistically  the  array  of  facts  which  as 
yet  no  one  possesses ;  and  the  new  Dar- 
win whose  work  it  shall  be  must,  like 
his  predecessor,  spend  twenty-five  years 

79 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

in  the  gathering  of  "  all  facts  that  can 
possibly  bear  on  the  question."  When 
such  a  book  is  written,  we  shall  know 
for  the  first  time  the  real  significance  of 
war. 

If  any  war  is  good,  civil  war  must  be 
best.  The  virtues  of  victory  and  the 
lessons  of  defeat  would  be  kept  within 
the  nation.  This  would  protect  the  na- 
tion from  the  temptation  to  fight  for 
gold  or  trade.  Civil  war  under  proper 
limitations  could  remedy  this.  A  time 
limit  could  be  adopted,  as  in  football, 
and  every  device  known  to  the  arena 
could  be  used  to  get  the  good  of  war 
and  to  escape  its  evils. 

For  example,  of  all  our  States,  New 
York  and  Illinois  have  doubtless  suf- 
fered most  from  the  evils  of  peace,  if 
peace  has  evils  which  disappear  with 
war.  They  could  be  pitted  against  each 
other,  while  the  other  States  looked  on. 
The   "  dark   and   bloody   ground "    of 

80 


In  War 

Kentucky  could  be  made  the  arena. 
This  would  not  interfere  with  trade  in 
Chicago,  nor  soil  the  streets  in  Balti- 
more. The  armies  could  be  filled  up  ,  ^ 
from  the  ranks  of  the  unemployed, x/.^  ^^^ 
while  the  pasteboard  heroes  of  the  na- 
tional guard  could  act  as  officers.  All 
could  be  done  in  decency  and  order, 
with  no  recriminations  and  no  oppres- 
sion of  an  alien  foe.  We  should  have 
all  that  is  good  in  war,  its  pomp  and 
circumstance,  the  "grim  resolution  of 
the  London  clubs,"  without  war's  long 
train  of  murderous  evils.  Who  could 
deny  this  ?  And  yet  who  could  defend 
it? 

If  war  is  good,  we  should  have  it  re- 
gardless of  its  cost,  regardless  of  its 
horrors,  its  sorrows,  its  anguish,  havoc, 
and  waste. 

But  it  is  bad,  only  to  be  justified  as 
the  last  resort  of  "  mangled,  murdered 
liberty,"  a  terrible  agency  to  be  evoked 

SI 


The  Blood  of  the  Nation 

only  when  all  other  arts  of  self-defence 
shall  fail.  The  remedy  for  most  ills  of 
men  is  not  to  be  sought  in  "  whirlwinds 
of  rebellion  that  shake  the  world,"  but 
in  peace  and  justice,  equahty  among 
men,  and  the  cultivation  of  those  virt- 
ues we  call  Christian,  because  they 
have  been  virtues  ever  since  man  and 
society  began,  and  will  be  virtues  still 
when  the  era  of  strife  is  past  and  the 
"  redcoat  bully  in  his  boots  "  no  longer 
"  hides  the  march  of  man  from  us." 

It  is  the  voice  of  political  wisdom 
which  falls  from  the  bells  of  Christmas- 
tide:  "Peace  on  earth,  good  will 
towards  men ! " 


82 


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